Yesterday in Shanghai, the outgoing U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Hunstman–who also happens to be a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate–made news by criticizing the Chinese government’s human rights record in a kind of valedictory speech. His remarks called attention to something I hadn’t been aware of: an unusually harsh crackdown underway there against political [...]
I have been to a lot of U.S. Senate hearings, and I can tell you without a doubt that the best U.S. Senate hearings are the ones where U.S. Senators talk about masturbation. Better than war. Better than taxation. Better than Supreme Court confirmation fights. Senate hearings about masturbation easily top the rest. Back in [...]
Updated, 9:55 PM As negotiations over the federal budget crawl toward a conclusion, the process has taken on something of a surreal flavor. Members of Congress busy themselves by putting out statements assigning blame for an event they can prevent. A President intent on floating above the fray parachutes in at the eleventh hour to [...]
At a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee today Indiana Republican Dan Burton got steamed at UN Amb. Susan Rice for language in her Feb. 19 statement accompanying a US veto of a resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity. Burton called Rice’s statement a “slap in the face” of Israel. After vetoing the resolution Rice [...]
The folks behind the National Day of Prayer observances have taken a page from Tim Pawlenty’s playbook and produced a slick movie-like trailer to promote the upcoming (May 5) event. As a roiling storm gathers over–surprise!–San Francisco and Washington, DC, an intrepid band of believers gathers somewhere in the Real America heartland to battle the [...]
Stark similarities between the stricken nuclear plant in Japan and dozens of sites in the United States continue to emerge, suggesting that under similar drastic scenarios, the United States might face the same kind of disaster. It’s unclear what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or Congress are prepared to do about it, but they do have [...]
Wisconsin election officials are still in the process of certifying Tuesday’s unofficial 204-vote victory by assistant attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg over incumbent state Supreme Court justice David Prosser, but already the state is bracing for a recount. As I wrote for the magazine yesterday, the vote became a proxy for the battle over governor Scott [...]
The budget debate is far from over, but the good news is that they’re still talking: Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner are heading back to the White House at 1 p.m. on Thursday. But the morning’s gloomy prognostications don’t bode well for the chances of averting a government shutdown. If you [...]
It feels like a distant memory now, but you’ll recall that a big Democratic theme shortly before the 2010 elections was the way conservative “outside groups” not officially aligned with the party were bombarding Democratic candidates with attack ads funded by non-disclosed money. This was David Axelrod to ABC News in mid-October: [J]just disclose where [...]
In 1999, Garry Trudeau, the author of the comic strip Doonesbury, parodied the likely stump speech of Donald Trump, the billionaire brand and building builder, who was then considering a run for the Reform Party nomination for President of the United States. It went like this: “Biggest! Best! Me! It’s unbelievable! Biggest! Mine! Tallest! Biggest! [...]
